Teaching Towards Jewish Peoplehood:
A Comprehensive Educational Framework​​​

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Introduction: Defining Jewish Peoplehood Education

Jewish Peoplehood education can be defined as the educational intervention required to nurture a "Peoplehood Consciousness" and an active commitment to the Jewish collective enterprise.

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Because Jewish Peoplehood is by definition a complex concept, which we hope students will embrace and integrate as part of their personal identity, it is necessary to develop both an emotional and an intellectual connection to it. Through the emotional connection, the intellectual becomes personally relevant and more meaningful.

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Furthermore, for that connection to endure and become significant, a knowledge base must be accompanied by a process of reflection and integration into the individual's value system, and expressed in concrete behaviors.

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The Central Goal: Developing Peoplehood Consciousness

A central goal of Peoplehood education is the development of Peoplehood Consciousness—a synthesis of the emotional and intellectual connections to the idea and reality of the Jewish People.

Through intellectual and emotional development, the Peoplehood Consciousness provides the rationale, skills and motivation to become actively involved with the Jewish People in concrete ways. This creates a pedagogic balance between three interconnected components:
 

The Four-Part Framework

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1. Engagement with the Jewish People – Connecting with the Heart
    

2. Developing Peoplehood Commitment through Knowledge – Connecting with the Mind
    

3. Integrating Engagement and Commitment - The Synthesis of Heart and Mind
    

4. Motivating Action-Oriented Expressions of Belonging – Connecting with the Hands
    

Each of these goals requires distinct methods for achievement, yet they are interconnected and interdependent. One cannot build commitment without engagement. Similarly, one cannot reach serious engagement without some level of cognitive knowledge. And action has an impact that is both cognitive and emotional.
 

Part 1: Engagement with Peoplehood – Connecting with the Heart

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Understanding Emotional Engagement

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Engaging with Peoplehood is often the first step in the Peoplehood journey. It is the affective process of developing an interest and making an emotional connection with other Jews. Most centrally, it implies making one's membership in the Jewish People personally relevant, meaningful and important.

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Outcomes of Successful Engagement

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The results of engagement include:

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• An interest in learning more about the Jewish People

• A sense of solidarity with other Jews

• Pride in the achievements of the Jewish People

• An emotional connection to the collective past

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Part 2: Developing Peoplehood Commitment – Connecting with the Mind

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The Role of Knowledge in Building Commitment

If engagement is sparked by emotions and thrives on spiritual energies, then the process of commitment-building complements the affective input with knowledge and reflection. This knowledge is meant to substantiate one's commitment to the Jewish enterprise by providing both the content base and the ideological foundations for making Peoplehood rich, meaningful and relevant for young Jews creating their identities in the 21st century.

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The Cognitive Component

The cognitive component of Peoplehood education includes cognitive understandings and knowledge of what Jewish Peoplehood is—its meaning, purpose, history, culture, languages, and more.

When integrated with the affective sense of engagement and identification, this knowledge provides the ingredients for a sustained lifelong consciousness, which in turn yields commitment to the Jewish enterprise. This can be achieved through a reflective process that integrates the new consciousness into the learner's existing value system.

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Part 3: Integrating Engagement and Commitment – Building Peoplehood Consciousness

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The Synthesis of Heart and Mind

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Peoplehood Consciousness is the integration of the emotional and cognitive educational processes.

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Educational philosopher Lee Shulman (1. see below) offers a learning taxonomy that connects engagement and commitment. Commitments are developed through a process of knowledge acquisition, compelling experiences, critical reflection and emotional connection that ultimately lead to new forms of engagement. Shulman counsels us to avoid treating these elements as a hierarchy, and instead, to think about them as interdependent and cyclical steps which can repeat over time.

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Creating a Lived Experience

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If engagement is the initial connection to an idea or social phenomenon that exists outside of the participant, ongoing commitment requires learning and reflecting on how this fits into one's existing belief system and "life routine."

Focusing on developing a Peoplehood consciousness entails deeper and ongoing forms of teaching that demand exploration of multiple and overlapping dimensions of meaning. It also requires creating ongoing resources and opportunities to allow Peoplehood to become a lived experience.

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The Reflective Process

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For Jewish Peoplehood education, learners identify and reflect upon the emotional, intellectual and spiritual aspects of Jewish Peoplehood and its place in their own lives. They articulate their beliefs and assumptions about what Jewish Peoplehood means to them and participate in reflective conversations with others around these beliefs and assumptions.

This leads to a broader understanding of the issue and its meaning and significance for their own value systems. At the same time, learners enrich their knowledge base, and equipped with deeper knowledge and new understandings, they develop a greater consciousness and appreciation of the value of Jewish Peoplehood in their own lives and for the Jewish collective as a whole.

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Part 4: Motivating Action-Oriented Commitment – Connecting with the Hands

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Beyond Consciousness to Action

In educational terms, creating a Peoplehood Consciousness could arguably suffice as a measure of success of the educational endeavor. However, the work of Peoplehood education cannot be declared truly successful without achieving commitment to the idea of Peoplehood as well as to action. The goal of Peoplehood education is to raise Jews whose commitment is active in their efforts to leave their mark on the world.

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The Learning-to-Action Pathway

As Lee Shulman (2. see below) tells us, "Learning begins with student engagement, which in turn leads to knowledge and understanding. Once someone understands, he or she becomes capable of performance or action. Critical reflection on one's practice and understanding leads to higher-order thinking in the form of a capacity to exercise judgment in the face of uncertainty and to create designs in the presence of constraints and unpredictability. Ultimately, the exercise of judgment makes possible the development of commitment."

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The Collective Imperative

The importance of motivation for action goes far beyond its significance for the individual actor—it provides the key to the continuity of the Jewish collective enterprise. Jewish civilization, through its communal and organizational settings, depends on the actions and commitments of its individual members.

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Without that active commitment, which (consciously or not) is based on a sense of Peoplehood, Jewish civilization is at existential risk. The role of Peoplehood education is to raise the next generation of leaders and activists who will ensure the continuity of the Jewish People and its revitalized mission in the world.

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Implementation Strategies for Educators

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From Theory to Practice: A Strategic Approach

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We have argued that the pedagogic strategy for Peoplehood education includes the affective, cognitive and behavioral faculties of the learner. What then are concrete strategies for implementing this Peoplehood pedagogy?

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Strategy Set I: Developing Engagement

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The Personal-to-Collective Journey

The focus of efforts to engage with the Jewish collective is primarily affective, centered on feelings and emotions. Engaging with the collective begins with the personal—the journey towards making the notion of the collective relevant starts with the individual, whether through one's personal family story, through a search for commonalities between stories, or through discovering moments or events that connect individuals with a sense of joint fate.

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When "I" Becomes "We"

Engagement takes effect when the individual's story begins to connect to the larger story—a stone in the Jewish mosaic creation. It is where the "I" becomes "We;" narratives converge and engaging with the collective holds not only the promise of belonging but also of discovering a richer, more intriguing self.

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Practical Engagement Methods

Pedagogically, engagement can begin through:

• Exploration of family stories

• Mifgashim (encounters) or dialogues with other Jews

• Exploration of Jewish texts and cultural material that explore the collective dimensions

• Travel experiences (such as Taglit-Birthright Israel and March of the Living) that highlight Jewish shared fate

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The Power of Mifgash (Encounter)

The Mifgash (encounter) is perhaps the most intense form of engagement with the greatest potential impact among Peoplehood educational interventions. Its magic may lie in the fact that through the "other" we actually interpret or reinterpret ourselves. The impact of such encounters may come from the power of being part of a group forming process which touches a deep chord within people's souls.

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Its power may draw from the fact that it is a semi-realistic simulation of a People which, in the case of the Jews, is a rather amorphous global entity. (Thus participants of Taglit are faced, usually for the first time in their lives, with something that looks like a concrete representative sample of the Jewish People). Perhaps the secret of the Mifgash is the interplay between all these factors. In any case, the Mifgash is unquestionably a powerful platform for creating engagement, energy, passion and dialogue.

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Strategy Set II: Developing Commitment

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The Cognitive Foundation

Because commitment is the phase that relies on a strong cognitive foundation (although it also includes reflection), the main strategy for this component of the pedagogy is to focus on content areas. Peoplehood education provides opportunities for learners to acquire knowledge within contexts that enable them to view that knowledge as relevant and important to them personally.

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Core Content Areas for Jewish Peoplehood Education

The following are central knowledge areas (in no particular order):

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Community: Communal structures and leadership, models of Jewish communities in the past and present.

Covenant: The purpose of the Jewish People as a collective, the glue that binds the people together. Visions and challenges of the Jewish collective going forward.

Values: The core values of the Jewish People, including truth and justice, charity (tzedakah), mutual responsibility, lovingkindness (hesed) and more.

Contemporary Jewish Life: The Jews today, geographical dispersion, demography, migration and contemporary issues.

Jewish Religion: Calendar, Jewish practices and customs, basic beliefs as expressions of the Jewish People's shared values.

Jewish History: Development of Jewish life and creativity around the world, including the mutual impact of Jews and their surrounding cultures on each other, up to and including anti-Semitism and the impact of the Holocaust.

Traditional Texts: Foundations and development of the collective Jewish conversation, as found in Biblical, Rabbinic, and later texts.

Cultural Expression: Folklore, literature, music and the arts.

Hebrew Language: Hebrew as the cultural glue that binds the dispersed people, the language of texts and religious expression and today, as the spoken language of over half of the people.

Israel as Vision and Venture: The role of the State of the People, and its contributions to the Jewish narrative.

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Teaching Approach for Content Areas

It is important to note that all these topics can be taught in various ways, but for Jewish Peoplehood education, the emphasis is on the people who are the actors in these narratives, and the broad sweep of a global collective that formed the civilization, passed it on from generation to generation, constantly contributed to it and kept it as a live entity that continues to leave its marks on the world.

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Educational Goals for Knowledge Transmission

The goal of imparting this knowledge is to highlight for students the importance and relevance of the Jewish enterprise and to develop personal pride and identification in being part of the people that created this legacy. Equally important is planting the seed for understanding the role individual Jews play in carrying and shaping Jewish civilization into the future.

For educators looking at these content areas, the key is to choose concepts at a developmentally appropriate age level, and to present them using creative pedagogies, such as project-based learning, experiential education, etc., within compelling educational contexts that learners find meaningful and stimulating.

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Strategy Set III: Motivating Action

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Integrating Action into Education

Encouraging the motivation and skills for action should not be seen as a post-program outcome but as an integral part of the educational process. Balanced and effective Peoplehood education programs contain a component of concrete actual expression of the commitment, which can take the form of an internship, structured volunteering or some kind of community service option.

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Age-Appropriate Action Strategies

Obviously, the actual strategy for concrete action depends on the educational context and the age of the students.

For Younger Students: The possibilities for meaningful action are certainly less, but nevertheless, there are options for students to meet and communicate with Jews of their own age in different communities and to be involved in joint projects.

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For Older Learners (High School and Above): Concrete actions include campaigns to strengthen Jewish organizations, shared philanthropy, social action, entrepreneurship and more. Mifgashim also provide opportunities to incorporate active projects with Jews from other places, whether virtually or face-to-face.

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Global Service Opportunities

There are growing numbers of opportunities for students to participate in service projects in Israel or in other parts of the world, both with and for Jewish or non-Jewish communities. As long as these actions are initiated, perceived and evaluated through a Peoplehood prism, they can all serve as potential building blocks for the future Jewish People, and they will contribute to its sustainability and growth.

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The Practice Component

Just as in the fields of medicine, law, social work and education, components of practice (e.g., field work, clinical experience, internship) are integral to a successful Jewish Peoplehood education process.

The creation of space for action provides the learner the opportunity to connect practice to the emotional and cognitive experience, which in turn creates a powerful learning experience. The process includes action, reflection and opportunity to evaluate those actions and their implications for the individual's personal responsibility to their People and the world—the ultimate Jewish command.

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Summary: A Comprehensive Pedagogical Framework

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We propose addressing the Peoplehood pedagogic challenge using three integrated components:

1. Engaging with the Jewish People through building a sense of pride and solidarity by focusing on the emotional realm

2. Building Peoplehood Commitment through developing a Peoplehood consciousness which integrates knowledge, values and content with a sense of engagement

3. Motivating Action through exploring what obligates members of the Jewish collective by virtue of its mission in the world and their role in shaping its future

This framework provides educators with a comprehensive approach to nurturing both Peoplehood Consciousness and active commitment to the Jewish collective enterprise, ensuring the continuity and vitality of Jewish civilization for future generations.

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References:
1. Shulman, Lee (2007). “A Table of Learning: Making Differences.” The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/elibrary/making-differences-table-learning.

2. Lee Shulman, (Shulman, pp.2-3, 2007)